


Re:Construct

by Masu_Trout



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor Has No Genitalia, First Time, Lucy Lives, M/M, On Account of I Love Her, Porn With Plot, Post-Canon, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Thirium Pump Handjobs, Wire Play, background markus/north
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-12 03:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15986912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: The androids are free, but even the most peaceful of revolutions comes with a world of changes.Markus has an offer to make. Connor's starting to get used to this whole deviancy thing. And Hank—well, Hank just might be falling for his best friend.





	Re:Construct

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BonesOfBirdWings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonesOfBirdWings/gifts).



> Your prompts for these two touched on everything I love about them. I just hope this fic does them some justice.

As it turned out, you couldn't punch an FBI agent in the face while calling him a cocksucker and still keep your job afterward.

Go fucking figure.

Connor was horrified by the news—he snapped out apology after apology with his eyes gone wide and round, fingers drumming restlessly against his desk as he watched Hank shovel his piles of personal crap into a box, as if he could compute Hank his job back if only he ran his processors hard enough—but personally, Hank thought it was a hell of a way to go. Not the way he'd expected to go, mind, and not exactly the way he'd hoped to go either, but still. Decades from now, when overworked rookies fresh out of Academy got assigned downtown patrol on the midnight shift three fucking nights in a row, they'd turn to each other and whisper stories about the lieutenant who got himself fired for decking a federal official straight in the mouth.

Everyone had to leave some kind of legacy. If this was going to be his, well... he could've managed worse. Probably.

"All right," Hank said, staring at the haphazard mess piled into the box in front of him. "Think that's everything. You gonna walk me to my car, Connor, or they have someone else picked out to do that duty?"

"Of course I'm walking with you, Lieu—Anderson," Connor said, sounding affronted. 

"I think we're okay for first names by now." Hank huffed as pulled the box up into his arms. Jesus, he thought, this felt heavy to him these days? He never should have stopped lifting weights. He'd had some actual upper arm strength back in his thirties. "Keep calling me Anderson, I'm going to feel like I'm in the Matrix."

Connor's mood ring spun yellow. "Your references date you, you know." A moment's pause before he added, "Hank."

Hank grinned. "Come on, then. Walk the gauntlet with me."

\---

Officially, you weren't supposed to give an officer shit for leaving, no matter what reason they left for. Fired, retired, found a better job—there was a sense of respect between officers that lasted beyond the moment when that badge came off. 

Unofficially, there wasn't a chance in hell that Reed was going to miss out on his one last chance to fuck with Hank. Hank would've almost been disappointed if he _weren't_ standing there blocking the front doors as he walked up; would've been a breach of the social contract between them if they didn't take every given opportunity to be dicks to each other. But just because he knew it was going to happen didn't mean he had to like it. No, Hank took one look at his smug, greasy face and suddenly wanted to see if he could get away with punching a detective any easier than he'd gotten away with punching an FBI agent.

Before he could try it, though, Connor was there. He slid into the space between Hank and Reed, and then he slid just as easily into Reed's personal space. Standing a step too close, smiling a smile that was a touch too wide... Hank would've believed it was accidental if he hadn't seen Connor behave perfectly respectfully to people in the office a dozen times over by now. There was a difference between Connor making people uncomfortable because he genuinely didn't understand how not to and Connor making people uncomfortable because he _really fucking wanted_ to see them uncomfortable, and Hank was pretty sure he was beginning to be able to tell the two apart.

Reed, though—there was no way he knew what Connor was doing. He puffed his chest out, trying and failing to look less scrawny than his natural height of five-foot-insecure. "I heard they'd finally decided to sweep some of the trash out of this department. Almost couldn't believe it, but look it this!" He grinned. "And they're recycling plastics today too. This place is going to feel so fresh."

Oh, yeah, Hank decided, someone's face was definitely getting a fist today. Before he could step forward, though, Connor was abruptly _there_. He hadn't moved, had hardly even changed expression, but somehow he was filling the space around him so much more solidly than he had been only a minute ago. His smile no longer seemed so friendly, his posture no longer so nonthreatening.

Reed visibly shivered. Hank would never admit it, but he did too.

"Detective," Connor said, uncomfortably polite, "it was very generous of you to see us out. Now, if you would _move aside_."

Reed's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. His hands curled into fists, the muscles in his arms tensed... and then he took an abrupt, jerky step backwards, clearing their path out the door. "Yeah," he snapped, "yeah, you'd better get the fuck out."

Connor swept towards the entrance. He almost acted normal about it too—would look entirely himself, if not for the way he was walking. Joints stiffer than they'd been since he went deviant, wearing his blandly pleasant expression like it was armor.

Hank made a decision. "Hold my shit," he said, unceremoniously tipping his box into Connor's arms, then spun around to face Reed fully.

It was a little insulting, how easily Connor could shoulder the weight, but it was more than worth it for the look on Reed's face when Hank shot him the double-bird all the way out. 

"Eat shit, Anderson!" Reed snarled, just before the automatic doors cut him off.

Hank couldn't hold back the smile that threatened to split his face wide open. He risked a look in Connor's direction; implacable, poker-faced, until they were out of Reed's field of view. The moment they were home free, he met Hank's grin with an answering smile, as conspiratorial and delighted as any Hank had ever seen.

Fuck. They did make a good team. Still felt weird as hell to admit, but he was going to miss working with Connor. Probably was gonna be the bit of it he missed the most. (And damn did he ever have it bad if he really was already getting nostalgic over an android with a face like a door-to-door knife salesman and a tendency towards licking crime scenes.)

He hoped Connor would still want to hang out with him occasionally now that he was his own person and now that they didn't have the job in common. Not all the time, obviously, Hank wasn't that fucking pathetic (he wasn't, he _wasn't_ ), but maybe they could grab dinner sometime? Or not dinner, 'cause Connor didn't eat, and not drinks either 'cause Connor didn't drink, but...

Two things occurred to him at exactly the same time. One, he had absolutely no idea how to pass the time in a way that didn't involve eating, sports, or getting drunk off his ass. Two, all his ideas for things to do with Connor sounded less like platonic friends shit and a whole lot more like dates.

Hank grimaced. He wasn't thinking about that right now. Now was the time for giving Connor all the advice he could while Connor still respected him enough to maybe take some of it.

"Look," he said, "Uh, don't let Reed give you too much shit, okay? You know how to take him, he's more bark than bite. And he's not half as high up as Perkins, you can get away with punching him again if that's what it takes."

"Do you think he's going to attempt to stalk me?" Connor asked, sounding way too fucking casual for a question like that. "He might find it difficult, I don't currently have a permanent home address and his detective skills are... well."

No one but Connor could make a single word sound so cuttingly dismissive. Hank pulled the driver's side door open. "Just toss my shit in the... um?" 

He looked into his car to find Connor already sitting in the passenger's seat with Hank's box tucked neatly on his lap. "What was that, Hank?"

Hank stared. The gears in his head turned. Turned and turned and turned some more, and then finally they caught.

"Connor," he said slowly.

"Yes?" 

"Why aren't you headed back to work?"

Connor stared back at him, equally confused. "Well, it would be strange of me to try, seeing as I no longer have a work to head back to." 

Hank took a deep, steadying breath. Pinched the bridge of his nose, trying in vain to force back the beginnings of a headache, and said, "What the _fuck_ , Connor."

Connor's face smoothed out into perfect, mechanical apathy. Just how he always looked when he was planning to start acting like a stubborn prick. (As opposed to an obnoxious prick, or an oblivious prick, or any of the other ways Connor could make himself deeply unbearable.) "We're partners, Lieutenant. My mission is to work with you."

"You were assigned to the DPD, not me!" Hank said, and then, remembering, " _And_ you're a fucking deviant!"

"That just means I now have greater latitude to define what my mission means to me. And I've decided it means working alongside you, specifically." He tilted his head, headlamp glowing bright gold, suddenly looking unsure. "If you're not opposed, that is."

"I'm not— _Christ_ ," Hank snarled, half to himself, "I'm not opposed. You should be, though." Hell, Hank ought to be opposed too. He knew better than to drag someone else down with him. "And you can't tell me Fowler is all right with this."

"He was very understanding, actually. Said he wished me the best of luck." Connor actually went back to smiling, then, if only for the briefest of moments. "It was my first experience with an exit interview, and all things considered I think it went well."

 _An exit interview_. Like he was building a resume. Well, in his case, he probably was—not like someone as brilliant as Connor would have trouble finding a job, now that androids could actually get paid. 

"So what are you going to do, then? Where are you going to stay?"

"My mission is the same as it ever was, speaking broadly. Assist you, deal with android-related problems. I've reworked the meaning behind those statements is all. And..." Connor hesitated. "There are cubicles available for rent," he said slowly. Very, very cautiously. The way he spoke when he was realizing he'd misjudged something badly. "CyberLife charging receptacles retrofitted to provide living spaces for deviant androids. I could easily procure one."

It took Hank a minute. He wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box. But eventually it hit him what Connor had been hoping for, and what Hank had accidentally just implied. "I'm not—god, I'm not going to send you off on your own," he growled. "Don't imply shit like that."

Connor's LED flipped from yellow to bright pale blue. It really was a mood ring, wasn't it? Just fancier than the ones that all the girls had worn and all the boys had been secretly jealous of the girls for wearing back when he was a kid.

"In that case, I don't see what the issue is. I think we work together well."

"I. Well." Hank grasped at straws and pulled one wildly from the haystack. Strawstack. What the hell ever. "Don't you have things you need to do back in there still?" He gestured at his own box of knick knacks where it sat on Connor's lap. "Stuff you need to get?"

Connor rummaged in his pocket for a moment and pulled out a single ballpoint pen. Grey plastic. CyberLife branded. "I've already finished gathering my personal effects."

And wasn't that just the saddest thing Hank had heard today.

"You're going to regret this," Hank warned him. State-of-the-art police-bot quitting his cushy police job to follow some old, washed-up sadsack of a fired lieutenant around... you didn't need Connor's detection skills to figure out that was a bad plan.

"I have become _extremely_ well-acquainted with the feeling of regret these past few weeks," Connor said, still way too fucking calm for the words that were coming out of his mouth. "As of yet, I've felt none over this decision."

There was a pit of heat forming somewhere in Hank's chest. It was either heartburn or the cockles of his shriveled-up heart warming up. 

He ought to turn Connor down, for his own good. It wouldn't be too late for him to get his job back, Hank was sure—the DPD was in full all-hands-on-deck mode, down most of their android force and now down Hank too. No way Fowler wouldn't be glad to have Connor aboard.

But, Christ, Connor'd spent most of his life getting told what to do by everyone else around him. He deserved to be allowed to make a stupid-ass decision every now and then. 

"Fuck it, fine," Hank sighed. "Climb on in."

Connor beamed, his grin stretching from ear to ear, and he had his seatbelt buckled before Hank had even finished getting into the car.

\---

Unemployment was a funny-sounding word. It had been Hank's one last remaining fear back before Connor, his job the one thing the world could still take away from him. And, with that, there'd been a strange sort of relief to it too—he'd _wanted_ to lose his routine, his last tenuous ties to the man he'd once been. It would've finally given him the excuse he needed to load his revolver up with more than one bullet. So he'd danced just on the edge of what he could get away with, desperate to be fired but never quite willing to commit to it, waiting with bated breath for the moment when automation finally came for his job too.

(When he'd first met Connor, down at Jimmy's, he'd taken one look at The Android Sent by CyberLife™ and thought, _Welp, guess it's time, then_. Funny how things worked out sometimes.)

Now, with Connor by his side, _unemployment_ mostly meant that he spent a lot more time walking Sumo. Kind of anticlimactic, that. Connor liked it when Hank was up before ten, he liked it when Hank got exercise, he liked it when Hank ate things with vegetables on top no matter how much he grimaced through them. All Hank's plans of lounging around until three and spending days on the couch on his underwear watching whatever garbage was on TV had vanished before the might of Connor's stubbornness.

Hank was even drinking less, was the thing. As his brand-new impromptu roommate ( _the bum_ , Hank had taken to calling him fondly, seeing as he didn't pay rent), Connor had apparently made it his life's mission to clean Hank's life up. And normally Hank would immediately adjust things to make sure his own life's mission become 'fucking himself up as badly as possible' until the person trying to force him to be better went away, but... well, that was harder when it was Connor. What with the puppy dog eyes and all that.

It felt bizarrely natural to rearrange his life around Connor: he installed a charging station in the front hall, warm enough that Sumo napped curled around it whenever he was able; he let half of his closet fill with suits so obscenely formal they could have been CyberLife issue if they hadn't been missing the android labelling; he didn't complain when he found cups with blue blood clinging to the rim in the kitchen sink.

The whole thing seemed inevitable, really. Like Connor wasn't a new addition at all, just someone come to fill a gap in his life that Hank had never even realized was there.

Even so, there was only so much time a person could spend walking dogs and reading papers (and, in Connor's case, doing weird deviant shit like organizing all the plates in Hank's cabinets by color) before boredom started to set in. Maybe Hank shouldn't have been surprised when Connor came up to him one morning—nine-fifteen, what was the fucking world coming to—and sat across from him at the coffee table. 

"So," he said, "I've found a potential job opening."

"Mmph," Hank grunted around his coffee. "Congrats. 'M proud of you."

"It's for both of us, Hank."

Hank immediately choked. "Shit," he said, between coughs, "what _is_ this job? Burger-flippers at McDonald's? Cashiers at Meijer's?" But no, even those didn't work, all those places had gone fully automated.

"It's relevant to both our experience," Connor said. "Private detective work. All above-board. I've checked."

"Huh." If this was legitimate, it could be... well, amazing was the only word for it. Hank had never dared hope he'd be able to do something even close to his old work again. "Who wants us?"

Connor's hesitation was the first warning. His bright yellow LED was the second. Third strike, you're out, came when Connor opened his stupid, perfectly-molded mouth and said, "Markus."

" _Markus_."

"Well, Jericho, to be accurate. The android advocacy group, not the boat. Though Markus is the one I've personally been speaking to on the matter."

Hank stared. And stared. He slammed back the rest of his coffee, just in case that helped make sense of things, and then stared a little more. "You want us to be private detectives... for what, the entire deviant community?"

Connor nodded, as if he'd said something reasonable. "Well, only the Detroit-based deviants, currently. But otherwise that's accurate. They've set up a base of operations at the Russell Industrial Center nearby. I've heard it's quite nice."

"Do I have to prick my arm, remind you what color I bleed? Not a single one of them is going to be okay with letting a human ex-cop case their new home." Especially given that last time the cops had shown up to an android gathering, the whole place had _exploded_. Not exactly setting a great precedent there.

Connor leaned over the table and into Hank's personal space, gazing intently at him all the while. "I trust you, Hank. Deeply."

"Yeah, you're the only fucking android who does. And with good reason, too—you know as well as I do all the shit the DPD and the FBI pulled. They'd be crazy to let me within fifteen feet of them."

For a long, long moment, Connor didn't say anything at all. And then he made a soft noise of distress and reached out to rest his hand on top of Hank's. "Please? Just consider it?"

Hank made a noise that sounded somewhere between a cough and a dying animal. His face had to be flushed bright red by now. Out of embarrassment, surely. "I... well, I suppose I would hear them out. Not that this is going to go anywhere."

Connor gave him a warm, genuine smile and squeezed his hand. "Thank you. You won't regret it."

He sighed. "I don't know how you manage to talk me into these things." At least this might help Connor meet some new people. He needed friends who weren't Hank. "When do they want us over there?"

"Today!" Connor said cheerily. "But don't worry, I told them we wouldn't be there until after lunch."

" _Today_? Goddamn it, Connor, you can't just... ugh." 

Bastard had done that on purpose.

There was more he wanted to say. To yell, really. But Connor was smiling at Hank, his skin reflecting a bright sky-blue off his forehead, and damn was it hard to argue with a face like that.

At least Connor'd given him enough time to get another cup of coffee.

...With whiskey in, this time. God knew he was going to need it.

\---

Russell Bazaar was a squat, stout rectangle of concrete and glass on the outskirts of Detroit, one of an interconnected cluster that overlooked I-75. Together the buildings made up a factory that had been left abandoned, remade, raided, and left to rot again—now, apparently, it was getting new life once more as one of the locations the city of Detroit had temporarily allotted to the massive population of free androids displaced after the demonstration. 

Hank pulled into the parking lot slowly, feeling smaller and more reluctant with every step he got closer to actually stepping inside the place.

One outer wall of the building was taken up entirely by a flaking mural depicting a massive mechanical chimera crouched and ready to attack. Faded red wings curled protectively around its body, tail streaming blue fire, lion's-head bared in a snarl and framed by a mane of wires and cables... it was an old piece, and one he'd driven by hundreds of times before, but somehow it seemed to have taken on a new life with the androids now living inside the building it protected. Connor stared up at it as Hank parked, LED flickering in a thoughtful blue circle. 

"Do you think that was on purpose?" he asked. 

It took Hank a moment to realize what Connor was talking about. He followed his line of sight up and up and up the wall, until finally they were both staring at the same spot along the chimera's muzzle. There was a dark streak of blue paint just under its right eye, smeared sideways and then down; from this distance, it looked like a wound dripping bright blue blood.

"Honestly?" Hank said. "No way. It's been here since way before. Fits, though, doesn't it?"

Connor nodded once. "...It does." He sat there for a moment, thinking, and then he opened the door and stepped out of the car in one graceful movement. "Coming, Hank?"

Hank stuck behind Connor as they made for the building's doors. Connor's forehead glowed a worried yellow, in defiance of his stubbornly resolute expression. 

"You know," Hank muttered, watching Connor gleam brighter and brighter yellow as they approached, "it's okay to admit you're nervous."

"And if I _were_ nervous, I would admit it." Connor glanced back a minute to scowl at him, then—unexpectedly, unbelievably—reached back to take Hank's hand in his own.

"Um?" Hank said, like the massive fucking genius he was. 

Connor's grip tightened, then went slack as he seemed to realize just what he'd done. Hank tightened his own hold on Connor's hand before he could let go.

There was a moment where neither of them said anything. They just ambled forward, hand-in-hand, for two awkward steps before they both abruptly let go at the exact same time.

"Well," Hank said, "huh," because apparently he was batting two for two on brilliant observations today.

Connor sucked in a deep and entirely unnecessary breath, then continued, "However, as I'm not nervous, there's no need to say anything."

"Right. Of course." Hank raised an eyebrow, and got Connor's very best I-know-exactly-what-you're-thinking glare in return.

Neither of them said anything more. Together, they walked through the doors of the Russell Bazaar.

Inside... well, inside was chaos. The factory floor had been converted into a mess of ramshackle rooms surrounded by tents and medical stations. Art covered every square inch of wall and was rapidly spreading across the floors and ceiling—old, human murals beneath, covered in places by overlapping android graffiti. **ra9** was a hit, of course, and Hank also caught glimpses of Jericho's strange circle-within-a-circle symbol repeated alongside **I AM ALIVE** and **I THINK THERFORE I AM** and some sort of odd stylized pound key. Androids mingled together, perfect human replicas mixed with blue-scarred people missing skin or limbs or worse. Here and there, he caught sight of even stranger: a man with a circuit-board-patterned scar too complex to be accidental stretching across his face haggled for blue blood with a woman whose eyes glowed bright orange; a Traci model with circle LEDs embedded all down her arms in the world's most high-tech tattoo sat in front of a nearby TV; a woman with a cracked-open skull and cables spilling down her back like hair watched him and Connor from a doorway as they passed, her eyes dark and glittering.

It shouldn't have bothered him. He didn't want it to bother him. But Hank looked around and all he could think was _fuck, they want me?_ He didn't understand these androids. Hell, he hardly understood Connor most days, and he lived with the guy. 

Back on that first mission with Connor, the abandoned house and the deviant in the attic, he'd arrested a man who'd only been trying to defend himself. What if he did that again? Fucked up, missed some vital clue, let everyone down because they'd decided they wanted to trust some shitty alcoholic bum? Hank only managed to hold onto his job for as long as he had because Jeffrey felt sorry for him; here, with not just lives but the existence of an entire species on the line, it would stupidly easy to fuck things up beyond saving.

(It scared him how easy this newfound peace would be to break; what would happen if the president came back one night on TV and announced they weren't honoring their promise to the androids after all? Or if CyberLife or that rat-bastard Kamski decided the risk of violence was worth taking to regain control over their creations? 

What would he do if Connor went away?)

Lost in his own thoughts as he was, it took Hank longer than it should have to realize everyone was staring. A hush fell over the crowd, spreading like a virus until the hall around them was still and silent. 

Androids didn't breathe. You never noticed it until you were around a whole fucking lot of them at once.

Hank said, very _very_ quietly, "Told you this was a bad plan."

Connor responded, every bit as softly, "It's not you they're looking at."

His head was tilted to the side, his LED was flashing _yellow-red-yellow-red-red-red—_

He looked deep in concentration. Listening, Hank realized, to something a human couldn't hear. And, all around him, the androids were staring Connor's direction. Some of them looked angry. Others sympathetic.

Androids could talk that way, couldn't they? Silently, without so much as opening their mouths. Some sort of weird bluetooth shit or something. He'd never even figured out normal bluetooth, he couldn't be expected to know how it worked.

Still. Connor was his... friend. And he wasn't a complete asshole. Before he could talk himself out of it, Hank stepped in front of Connor, stared down the crowd of androids, and said, "Hey. Something I should know about?"

...And they might not have been paying attention to him before, but they sure as hell were now. Fuckin' great.

"Hank," Connor whispered, despairingly. 

There was a long, long pause, until finally one of the androids said, " _And_ he brought a human with him. Lovely."

"He has every right to be here," another said reproachfully, "and to bring who he likes. This isn't Jericho. We aren't hiding anymore."

A man with _ra9_ carved into his cheek in blocky blue letters made a rough sound of disgust. "We wouldn't have needed to hide so long in the first place if not for the _deviant hunter_."

Hank blinked, trying to hide his surprise. He hadn't expected... but no, it made a twisted sort of sense, didn't it? The androids here had never met Connor before. They'd didn't know him as the guy who had a repertoire of coin tricks worthy of a Vegas Strip magician, who once got sat on by a Saint Bernard for four hours straight because he didn't want to make Sumo move, who could ruin an amazing burger just by pointing out how many calories it had. All they had were stories of the RK800, the deviant hunter who wanted them all dead or decommissioned. 

He had to be these people's boogeyman. 

"He helped us, didn't he? I wouldn't be awake if not for him. Why shouldn't he come?" 

"As if one mission was enough to wipe away everything he did—" 

"That's enough." The voice rang out like a bell, audible even over the growing noise of the restless androids. The crowd shuffled a moment and then parted seamlessly around the person approaching Hank and Connor.

It was the woman he'd seen earlier, the one with her skull spit open and the cables inside falling free. She'd seemed a bit eerie from afar, but up close she was— _well_. Hank didn't know if the word he wanted was entrancing or terrifying. Dots of light swam in her pitch-black eyes, like galaxies in miniature. You met her stare and you knew she was seeing right through you.

 _My god_ , he thought, taking refuge in old familiarity, _she's full of stars_.

"Lucy..." one of the androids who'd been snarling at Connor said. Hank took comfort in the fact that he looked every bit as uncomfortable as Hank felt.

The woman—Lucy—inclined her head in Hank's direction. That small, knowing smile never once left her face. "It's good you both could come." She turned to face the other androids and said, in a voice that shouldn't have been able to carry as far as it did, "Markus has asked to see them. If you wish to discuss that decision, please speak to him directly."

There was a general sort of mutter from the crowd, too indistinct for Hank to pick out any sort of general sentiment out of it, and then, as if on cue, the androids turned away from the two of them. Televisions flickered back on, conversations started back up again, the shopkeepers standing in front of the little pop-up stores lining the hallways went back to showing off their wares. It was muted, all of it, uneasy and fragile, but Hank at least appreciated the effort.

Before he could relax too much, though, a hand brushed his arm. Hank startled, turned, and found himself looking into the eyes of a nervous—and oddly familiar—android.

"Hello," she said, voice pitched low and quiet, "I just wanted to say... we're glad you're here, no matter what some might say. There are those of us who remember what you both did." With that, she turned and disappeared into the crowd.

"Connor?" Hank asked, staring confused into the space where an android had been standing only a moment before. "Should I... remember her?"

Shit. Was it bad if he couldn't recognize them? Had to be. But they only had maybe two hundred facial models between them, hopefully they'd cut him some slack if he got mixed up.

Connor's LED spun. "She matches the model of android stored beneath the CyberLife Tower."

"Huh. She knows I didn't do shit that night except get kidnapped, right?"

"On the contrary," Connor said, "I doubt I would have survived that night if not for you."

"Come on, Connor, you don't have to patronize me."

The look Connor gave him them was pure indignant offense, from the bright swirling yellow of his LED down to the disapproving twist of his mouth. Before he could start up with whatever comment he wanted to make, though, Lucy cut in. She glanced between them, back and forth, and her strange smile grew just a little bit wider.

"Would you like to see Markus?" she asked them.

"Please," Connor said with a polite nod.

 _Thank you_ , Hank thought as loudly as he could manage. Forget whatever creeped-out feelings he'd been having; she was officially his favorite android in this whole goddamn city. 

Lucy led them through a winding, circuitous route. Past storage rooms full of supplies and charging stations lined up with mechanical precision; beyond cramped rows of single room apartments, no beds or bathrooms or kitchens, that had to be these androids' homes; up two flights of stairs and through a sky bridge connecting two buildings and then down another long and graffiti-covered hallway. She didn't pause a moment in front of the closed door at the end of the hallway, just swept right in and motioned for them to follow.

The room inside was painted just as heavily as everywhere else, but even someone as uncultured as Hank could tell it was different. A massive mural had taken over three of the walls and was in the process of spreading to the fourth. Unlike the art on the floors below, there was nothing overlapping or fighting for space—the mural here was pure, chaotic color, but it was planned chaos. He felt like he'd stepped into a DIA exhibit. Mismatched chairs and tables were scattered around the room, some of them covered in jars of paint and others in computers and official-looking paperwork. 

And, in four of the chairs, there were androids. They looked like they'd been waiting for them to show. Lucy must've sent them a warning.

Hank recognized Markus immediately—hard not to, considering just how many e-magazines he'd been on the cover of recently. He smiled warmly at Hank and Connor as they stepped through the door. The others were people he recognized from Connor pointing them out every time they appeared in the background of one of Markus's interviews, and from the vague memories he had of the night of Markus's big speech. (The parts of those memories not overshadowed by, _Holy shit, Connor's alive_ , _Holy shit, Connor's evil_ , or _Holy shit, I survived that_ , at least. Most of that night was just a vague blur of adrenaline to him.) 

Joshua, Simon, North; if Markus was the face of the revolution, they were the rest of its body.

Behind them, Lucy made her way to a chair tucked into the very corner of the room. An observer, Hank thought, and he had an idea just who she was going to be observing today.

"Lucy," Markus said, nodding towards the corner, "thank you." And then, to them, "Please, won't you have a seat?" He waved Hank and Connor into a nearby set of chairs.

Hank settled into the nearest option, a cushy and very obviously secondhand sofa chair, trying not too feel too old or too flabby or too much like he'd shown up to an interview without the slightest fucking clue what he was actually interviewing for. Connor took the chair next to him—and, of course, managed to actually look graceful doing it. 

"So," Hank said, clearing his throat roughly. "Thanks. For, uh, this."

Simon and Joshua each gave him smiles tinged with varying levels of awkward discomfort. North, on the other hand, glared at him with a look of such pure, venomous hatred that Hank immediately felt more at ease.

This whole day was shaping up to be confusing. But walking into a room and realizing someone in it wanted nothing more than to strangle him to death was reassuringly familiar. Just like being back at his old job.

"Of course," Markus said. His smile hadn't wavered a second. And he actually managed to make it look genuine, too. No wonder he'd ended up their leader. "We're just glad you could make it."

North snorted. She was very quickly climbing the ladder of Hank's favorite people here.

Connor ignored North, choosing instead to lean forward and give Markus his best _I'm a serious detective and also very trustworthy_ face, the one that made him look like an android Eagle Scout. "We're glad to be here. I already know some of what's being asked, but I'm afraid my picture's incomplete. Perhaps we could go over the exact details?"

Hank glanced at him as best he could without making it too obvious. No way he wasn't asking that for Hank's benefit.

It was Joshua who spoke then, as he plucked a pile of paperwork off the table and handed it to Connor. "Here. This is just some of what we're looking at."

"And that's only what we've got the human's files for," Simon added.

North cut in with a low angry noise. "Which means it's not even a thousandth of it. People don't file a police report when they throw away their _trash_."

The rage in her voice didn't make sense until Hank leaned over the back of Connor's chair. The top sheet was a police report for a damaged android. The next, when Connor flipped the sheet, for a stolen android. Missing, stolen, damaged, destroyed in a burglary, damaged by vandalism...

These were all lost property reports. Or, from another perspective, missing persons reports.

Hank felt a little sick, suddenly. Had he been the one to file any of these?

"Ah," Connor murmured. His eyes were focused on the page. His LED was a soft, whirling yellow. "This must be quite a backlog."

"We've been taking reports from the androids here too," Markus said. "But that's been even slower going."

"Yeah." Hank grimaced. "I can imagine." None of them had last names, or birth dates, or blood types or fingerprints for that matter. An android who went missing could easily become impossible to trace. There were a whole lot of less-than-honorable uses a kidnapped android could be put to, and a whole lot of folks willing to ignore the law and common decency alike if there was money to be made from it.

Markus looked straight at Hank, catching his eyes with his mismatched stare. "I know it may seem strange to you, but..."

"It doesn't seem strange to me," Hank said. "Gotta make your own family sometimes. I get that." 

Even if that family ended up being you and your dog and your weird ex-coworker living rent-free in your living room who you sometimes thought about kissing when it was three in the morning and you couldn't sleep. As a hypothetical example.

"There aren't any other other androids equipped for this task," Markus said. "Some among us worked as secretaries or security guards in police stations across the country. But when it comes to actual detective work, the RK800 line was the only prototype."

And Connor— _this_ Connor—was the only RK800 left, seeing as Hank had shot that dickhead down in the Cyberlife basement. He tried to feel guilty about that, but found that he really couldn't. Asshole had been threatening his partner.

"So that's where we come in," Hank said. "Missing persons detail."

Markus nodded. "Eventually we'd like to train some of our people for the task, but that takes time. And that's time we don't have if we want to avoid these trails going cold." He was silent a moment, then added, reluctantly, "I'm aware many of the people listed here aren't likely to have survived."

"Closure's important too." Hank coughed. There was a lump in his throat all of a sudden. Felt scratchy. "Otherwise you can never move on."

"Exactly," Markus said. He smiled once more, warm and bright. "Some of us have our doubts. You probably noticed downstairs. But I think you two could be just what we need."

It was a good job. It would keep him on his feet, feeling useful. And it would give him an excuse to stay close to Connor. All Hank had to do was smile and nod and keep his mouth shut long enough not to ruin this for himself.

Self-preservation warred against shame and lost badly. "Look," Hank said, "Not to sell myself short, here, but... well, frankly, I'm a fucking wreck next to Connor." 

Connor twisted in his chair to glare at Hank. "That's not—"

Hank waved him off before he could finish. "Come on, Connor, we both know it's true. You're some state-of-the-art Sherlock Holmes shit, and me..." God, where to even start on himself. "Well, let's just say I was obsolete even before you ever came around and leave it at that." He gave Markus his best level stare, trying not to look too pathetic even as he poured all his shortcomings out over this insanely comfy chair. "Look, I appreciate you inviting us both here, and I know we both ended up without a job at the same time, but there's no question it's Connor you want. I'm a grown man. My feelings aren't going to be hurt if you only want to work with him."

Markus opened his mouth—

" _How dare you_ ," Connor snarled. Actually fucking snarled, low enough and fierce enough that Hank's heart jumped. His LED was a solid ruby-red at his temple.

"Connor?" Hank asked, bewildered. 

"Don't _Connor_ me," he snapped. He was twisted in his seat to face Hank now, glaring at him like they were the only two people in the room. "You taught me morals, you saved my _life_ , and you think that's what you are? Some... cast-off piece of junk? Obsolete?" His fingers dug into the arm of his chair. His knuckles would be white if he'd had the blood to lose there. "What does that make me, then?"

Hank blinked. God, he l... _liked_ this android. A whole lot. "My fuck-ups aren't your fault, Connor," he said gently. "You turned out just fine, even having to haul my drunk ass to every single goddamn case you went on." 

He'd gone off and found Jericho while Hank was sitting on his couch and waiting to hear from him (and trying not to throw up out of sheer fear as he sat and watched the news). He'd set out on a wild suicide mission while Hank was busy getting fooled by some second-rate impersonator with a pretty face. And he'd given sentience to a thousand androids while Hank stood there and watched.

"You taught me everything," Connor said. Quietly, like he was afraid.

" _Everything?_ What black metal is? How to throw a drunk guy in a shower? I mean sure, I taught more than enough useless garbage—"

"—How it feels to pet a dog. What it means to put someone else above your own wants." Connor blinked. His eyes flickered back and forth, down and then back up to Hank's face again. "How to show someone kindness when they least deserve it. When they don't even realize they're capable of understanding things like kindness."

Well. Shit.

That wasn't... that didn't mean...

But Connor was looking at him so fucking earnestly, full of hurt and righteous anger, and there was no way he could be faking but no way he could mean that either.

...Could he? Had those tiny, insignificant things Hank had done, needles in the haystack of every obnoxious or insufferable or flat-out horrible thing he'd put Connor through, really meant so much to him?

He was saved from having a complete emotional meltdown in the middle of the most off-the-rails job interview ever by the sound of Markus gently clearing his throat. (Or, at least, simulating the noise of it.) "I wasn't going to mention this, but... when I first called Connor up, the job offer was for one person. He made it _very_ clear that you two came as a package deal." He glanced between the two of them, a smile turning his inhumanly handsome face into something gentler and more approachable, and said, "I think I understand now why he said that."

"Connor," Hank said, horrified and so happy he could burst, "you didn't."

Connor shot him a glance. "We're a team, Hank. We work together."

He could've kissed him right then and there. The last little thread of his self-restraint was the only thing that held him back—that and the knowledge that he currently had an audience of five androids with perfect memory recall.

God, the androids. Hank pulled his attention guiltily away from Connor's face, snapped it back towards three indulgent stares, one set of glossy and unknowable eyes... and North, looking distinctly disgusted by the whole parade of emotion.

"Um," he said. "So. If you're serious about this... I guess I accept, then. The job."

"I wasn't expecting to win this one," North said. "But for the record—and I _don't_ say this lightly—I agree with the human. We've got Connor, we don't need him." 

"Thank you," Hank said fervently. Good to know at least one person here still had their wits about them.

She shot him another glare, this one more deeply unimpressed than actively murderous. 

"...Huh," Simon said. "Never thought I'd see the day North agreed with a human."

"Never thought I'd see the day a human admitted he sucked at something."

Markus laughed, giving North a fond smile. "Well, so long as we're all in agreement on one thing or another—there's no need to get started today, but I might as well give you the files?"

He held his hand out, skin peeling away with the movement. 

Hank and Connor shot each other twin glances of perfect agreement: after what they'd seen today, they were definitely starting on the files tonight. Hank hadn't been so excited to work a case in a fucking decade. Amazing what being unemployed left you appreciating.

Connor slid smoothly from his chair and stepped forward, locking his hand with Markus's own. It was probably a sign of how far gone he was, Hank thought as he watched the transfer, that even Connor's weird shiny skinless body looked kind of hot to him. The things you could grow to appreciate.

When they left the Russell Bazaar, Connor was loaded down with four terabytes of digitized android reports and Hank with two duffel bags full of paper-copy police reports. Lucy led them back out again, past the teeming masses of androids who no longer seemed so intimidating, leaving them in the doorway with a smile and a "See you soon." Hank couldn't tell if it was politeness or prophecy.

They didn't speak on the way home. Every time Hank tried to open his mouth, the memory of just what he'd said in there rushed through him and left him flushed bright red. Connor had to be having the same issue, if his LED—blue abruptly shooting to yellow every time his face so much as twitched—was any indication.

No, they didn't say a word. But halfway through, Connor set his hand on the center console, and Hank took his hand off the steering wheel long enough to put his own hand over Connor's and give it a squeeze. 

Connor's skin was smooth and strange. It felt right.

\---

The not talking trend continued and didn't continue for the rest of the evening. They resumed a more-or-less normal flow of conversation as they walked through the front doors of their house. ("Hello, Sumo! Good boy!" "Don't call him a good boy every time you see him, Connor, you'll spoil him." "But he _is_ a good boy every time I see him.")

Things felt almost normal between them, except that tonight Connor didn't complain when Hank ordered a pizza beyond giving him a plaintive, "Please put at least one vegetable on it," and, once it arrived, Hank didn't eat it watching a game while Connor watched him. Instead they spread the first of the case files around them and got to work.

(The pizza was pepperoni. And green pepper, and onion, and tomato, and mushroom. Hank ignored Connor's smile as he dug into it.)

From the beginning, Hank could tell most of these were going to be a massive fucking drag. How did you find someone whose description perfectly matched fifty other androids in Detroit alone? How did you start looking for someone whose last known location was _at a junkard, in two pieces_?

Well, Hank knew the answer, actually. Legwork, and a whole goddamn lot of it. More than he'd done in years. From the looks of these, Markus had been right—they'd be bringing home a lot more disconnected scrap components than they would actual, living people. That sort of work always ended up dragging on a person's soul. He just hoped it would be worth it to the families. 

God, what the fuck was wrong with him, that he was excited over this? A year ago he would've anything to get out of working a case even half this involved. And now here he was, poring over the files like he was twenty-five and a rookie again. He was going to shatter his hip trying to pull some stupid athletic stunt and he'd have no one but himself to blame.

Hank glanced at Connor, who was currently staring blankly at the screen of his computer with one skinless hand pressed against the trackpad.

Yeah. Yeah, he knew what had changed. 

His attempt at spying on Connor was ruined when a yawn caught him by surprise. He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying to force himself awake, only for Connor to glance over at him.

"Oh. I didn't realize how late it had gotten. Do you want to call it a night? I'm going to put the files up soon myself."

Hank gave Connor a look.

"Well," Connor said, floundering, "I'll put them up soon- _ish_ , at least. Not much longer."

"Mm-hmm." He never should've taught Connor the versatility of _ish_. Hank'd used it to wisely, for making excuses to show up at the office late. Connor only ever used it to try and get away with working more.

Well, it was late. Sumo had to be fast asleep at the foot of Hank's bed by now. All the games on would just be reruns. It would be easy enough to just stumble to his bed and fall asleep. But—

"Actually," Hank said, "I was thinking we could talk a bit."

"I..." Connor paused. His fingers twitched like he wanted to reach for a coin. "I have over three thousand conversational topics programmed into my human integration subroutines. We could discuss the weather, or current events, or—"

"Connor." Hank pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I meant about what happened earlier."

 _Obviously_ , he didn't say. Connor always defaulted back to what he knew when he was trying to avoid a conversation.

"Right," Connor said. "Yes. Of course." His LED whirled, still blue, and then he asked, "May I sit next to you, Hank?"

Hank patted the couch cushion next to him. Connor rose—gracefully, always gracefully—and then sat delicately on the edge of the seat. Before Hank could get a word in edgewise, he was already opening his mouth.

"I apologize for causing a scene earlier. I had no intention of acting so unprofessionally, I just..." He glanced towards the floor, thinking, and then finally burst out with, "deviancy is _strange_ sometimes."

"Hah. Yeah, welcome to the world." Hank's own fingers twitched, a mirror to Connor's idle fidgeting, except it was a bottle he was wishing he had right now. It was deeply unfair, having to talk about emotions while sober. "You ever regret it? Deviancy, I mean?"

"No," Connor burst out, no hesitation at all. "It's frightening, and embarrassing, and inconvenient. But I only know it's those things in the first place _because_ I'm a deviant." His eyes flicked over to meet Hank's for one quick second before dropping away once more. "And there's some benefits, too. Things I never would have been able to experience otherwise."

"Yeah?" Hank asked.

Connor still wasn't looking at him properly, just grabbing little glances at him before going back to staring vaguely towards the floor, so Hank reached out and, against every bit of common sense left rattling around in his empty head, cupped Connor's cheek with his hand. 

It was artificial. Too strongly-defined to be bone. Hank wanted to run his fingers down it, and then down the rest of Connor.

"Look," he said, queasy with nerves, and then Connor leaned in and kissed him.

His mouth felt strange, firm and unyielding, and he kissed Hank like this was yet another mission for him: desperate and urgent, a little too harsh, a little bit panicked. Hank kissed him back just as fiercely; he opened his mouth to Connor, got a finger hooked in the collar of his fancy dress shirt to pull him in closer, all the while thinking _holy shit_.

Hank groaned when Connor's hand brushed his jeans. They broke off, Hank panting, Connor staring at him with wide eyes.

"Hank," he said, voice rough. His hands twisted in Hank's shirt, catching the fabric hard enough to stretch it. "Hank, I—" He cut himself off, mouth half-open, LED the brightest blue Hank had ever seen it.

A better man would pull away. Insist they talk all this out first, insist they not rush into anything. Hell, a better man would refuse it outright. Hank knew full well what quality of person Connor deserved, and he knew excruciatingly well each and every single way he fell short.

Hank was not that better man, so he only said, "Just tell me what you want."

"You," Connor said immediately, and then, "everything."

"Well, okay, let's maybe start out a little smaller than that."

Connor actually laughed—God, what a nice sound that was—and reached out to press a hand against the side of Hank's head, fingers curling in his hair. "Then, here, how about this?" And without so much as a warning, he was clambering into Hank's lap, pressing himself against the curve of Hank's stomach so they fit chest-to-chest with Connor staring directly into his eyes.

Hank was going to have a heart attack. He was going to have a heart attack, and he was going to die, and Connor was going to have to take care of poor Sumo. He groaned and rocked his hips against Connor. Connor's body was sleek and firm and unexpectedly heavy above Hank's, a solid weight pressing down on him. Fuck, he wanted this so bad. He felt like a goddamned teenager again.

"Can I do... something?" Hank asked. And then, realizing that with Connor he'd probably be more specific, he added, "To make you feel good?"

They shared a shower. He'd seen Connor's everything once or twice, and that _everything_ didn't include a dick. But from the way he looked on top of Hank right now, there was no question he had some kind of setup that let him get off.

Connor paused a moment, looking sidelong at Hank. "There's," he said, hesitating, "well, there's something. But it's a little bit strange. It's, ah, more of an engineering accident than a designed feature."

"Eh." Hank shrugged. "Pretty sure that's true for just about every feature we humans have, so you're doing pretty well there."

He got a little smile for that. Then Connor nodded once, LED going from bright blue to an uncertain, muted color, and began to pull at his shirt. Tie first, then each button one by one—Hank was half-expecting him to stop and fold it by the time he pulled it all off.

Connor's torso looked normal enough. Nipples, a bit of artificial muscle definition, freckles so perfectly-placed they had to have been hand-painted there. It got rapidly less normal, though, when the skin from collarbone to belly button abruptly peeled away to leave gleaming white beneath.

Connor's... body? Chassis? Well, whatever the hell it was, it was mostly featureless. A serial number printed across one molded plastic piece, a few seams here and there—and, perfectly centered in his chest, glowing soft blue, some sort of cylindrical part.

It looked important. 

It looked _really_ important.

"Here," Connor said, framing the piece between two fingers. "You just sort of—stimulate it." He made an in-and-out motion that couldn't possibly be misinterpreted. "I haven't done it myself, yes, but I'm told it's fairly hard to do wrong."

"That's..." 

"My thirium pump regulator," Connor said patiently.

"I know that," said Hank, who definitely hadn't known that. "I mean, it's a pretty important component right? You won't... die if I take it out, will you?"

"Oh, don't worry," Connor said. "Under optimal conditions, I have ten minutes from the time of the pump's removal before my body goes into irreversible shutdown." He cocked his head a moment, thinking, and then cheerily added, "So it's best you try not to lose it in the couch cushions, though."

"Asshole," Hank grumbled, panicking inside.

Connor wanted Hank to take his heart out. And fuck him with it. Because apparently that wouldn't kill him right away, so that was fine. His first time and he'd already gone past the feather, past the whole chicken, and into the realm of some sort of prehistoric mega-chicken monstrosity.

Well, maybe that was what Hank should've expected. Not like Connor to ever do anything halfway. And while the thought of playing with sensitive machinery terrified him more than a little, the fact that Connor trusted him with _this_... yeah, he liked that. A lot.

Hank took a deep breath. Wrapped his fingers in a loose half-circle around the indented mark where the pump melded into the rest of his body, and said, "So I just... press in?"

Connor made a soft, needy noise that went straight to Hank's dick. He looked Hank straight in the eyes and nodded.

The first gentle bit of pressure made it give a soft _click_ and depress a half-centimeter further into Connor's body. He lightened the pressure up and it—popped free, sort of, the cylindrical pump protruding slightly from the surrounding plastic like it had been spring-loaded. Connor whined when Hank took hold of it, and that whine turned into a hitching, breathy sob when Hank slid it loose from his body.

"Good?" Hank asked.

Connor nodded frantically. His lips were parted. His eyes were fixed on Hank's.

Hank slid it in place a moment, letting the pump scrape the walls of its channel and getting a soft needy noise as his reward. Then, as confidently as he could manage, he thrust it back in—and Connor moaned, head falling forward, hands digging into Hank's shoulders hard enough to bruise.

"Just like that," he said, sounding awed. "That's perfect, that's— _please_ , Hank," he begged, voice catching on a moan when Hank slid it free again.

"Okay, yeah," Hank said, completely out of his depth and as turned on as he'd ever been in his life, "I've got you, okay, I'm right here, just relax"—a constant litany of every half-coherent and vaguely approripate phrase he could remember spilled from his mouth as he worked the pump in and out of Connor's chest.

He hadn't known Connor could sound like this. He hadn't known Connor could look like this; imperfect, finally, desperate and undone and so handsomely alive that Hank's breath caught just to look at him. 

He ached from how hard he was, trapped in his jeans, but he didn't want to ruin this. All he wanted was to be able to keep doing this to Connor: fucking him with his fingers, with Connor's own body, until he finally got to see what he looked like when he came.

Unexpectedly, though, Connor braced his knees more strongly on the couch cushions to either side of Hank and in one smooth movement lifted his weight off of Hank's lap. "Wait," he said, "wait, wait—" and then he was fumbling and the zipper of Hank's jeans, trying to slide it open with hands that shook and trembled.

Hank started and tried to draw away when he realized what Connor was aiming for. (Hard thing to do with a lap full of android, as it turned out.) "C'mon, Connor, you don't have to do that."

This was going well, to Hank's immense surprise. It would go better if Connor wasn't forced to face the reality of what a man in his fifties with shit personal habits looked like compared to CyberLife's perfectly-sculpted ideals.

But Connor glanced up at him, tongue caught between his teeth, and said, "Please, Hank. I want to."

He stalled a long, long moment, hoping Connor might decide on his own that he wasn't so interested after all. When it became clear that wasn't in the cards, he sighed. "Fine."

Connor leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss and a, "Thank you," to the side of Hank's mouth before returning to his task. He got distracted a few times—Hank catching his fingernails on the edge of the pump, sliding it in shallowly to watch Connor squirm—but before long CyberLife-perfect reflexes had Hank's belt unbuckled and the zipper undone.

He made a low noise in the back of his throat as he pulled Hank's dick out from his underwear. His finger pressed lightly against the slid, catching the fluid beading there, and when Hank grunted and jerked his hips he darted his eyes back up to meet Hank's.

"That feels good?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Hank managed to get out. His brain felt like it was overheating.

Connor frowned, considering. "I think it's best I experiment more," he said, and very deliberately did it again.

" _Fuck_ , Connor," Hank groaned. He could barely think. All he wanted was to thrust into Connor's hand, lose himself in that feeling. There was no way Connor's hand should have felt as good as it did.

"Oh," Connor breathed. He was looking at Hank with an odd sort of nervous delight. "Okay, so I just..." and he slid his Hand down Hank's dick in one smooth stroke.

"Yeah, yeah, like that." Hank pressed back against it, and no fucking way was he going to last long so instead he slid Connor's thirium pump back in, almost to the hilt, until Connor cried out against him. Best he could hope for was to make sure Connor didn't last much longer either.

They found a strange rhythm then, the weirdest Hank had ever helped set. Him playing with a man's own heart between his fingers, sometimes thrusting it back into place so hard it reactivated in Connor's chest and he had to work to slide it back out again, other times pulling it out entirely so he could thrust his fingers into the hole there until Connor was a squirming, noisy wreck above him. (And didn't _that_ give him some ideas, of the sort he'd never ever feel confident enough to bring up to Connor.) Connor's touch was light at first, oddly cautious, but the more noises he managed to wring out of Hank the more confident he grew. 

Before long they hardly could manage to keep a rhythm at all; they were just rutting wildly against each other, making noises that weren't quite words, pressing kisses wherever they could reach. Connor's skin flickered in and out at his hands, his wrists, his shoulders, and Hank rubbed his fingers or his tongue against every plastic-white spot he could find. Connor, for his part, wouldn't stop kissing the spots where beads of sweat dotted Hank's collarbone and neck, and Hank could tell from the blissed-out look on his face each time he did it that he was doing some kind of freaky scanning thing to it.

This was the most bizarre sex Hank had ever had in his life. Very possibly the best, too. 

Hank was getting close. 

"Fuck," Hank hissed, thrusting once, twice more into the friction of Connor's hand, and then he came with a bitten-off moan. His world narrowed to nothing more than Connor's hands and his mouth and the Thirium pump in Hank's hands. 

_God_ , he thought, looking at Connor, _he's perfect_.

It left him shuddering, feeling warm and empty and more content than he'd been in ages. All he wanted to do was to pull Connor closer and curl up around him. He wasn't a complete asshole, though, so instead he slid the pump harder into the molded channel, pushing it in and out with rough, uncoordinated fingers, until finally he pressed it harshly back into place as Connor gave one last gasp and tensed and shook around Hank. His fingers pressed into the Hank's chin pulling his head up, and he pressed his mouth against Hank's in an off-center kiss as he rode his orgasm out in his lap.

For a while after, the two of them just laid there. Hank was breathing hard; he kept needing to glance down to make sure the regulator was properly back in place and Connor wasn't about to keel over on him. Connor's skin sealed slowly, white turning to pale peach. The last place for it to return was his hands; he raised one of them close to his face as it did, looking intently at how the skin had failed to cover the places where Hank's jizz was spilled across the plastic.

"Don't," Hank said.

"Of course I wouldn't," Connor said, and stuck all his fingers in his mouth at once.

Hank let his head fall back against the couch. "You know," he said, "there's this stage of development kids go through, where they start doing anything anyone tells them not to just to prove they can. Happens when they're about three."

"Well, I'm less than six months old," Connor said, giving him a obnoxiously faux-innocent smile, "so you should be proud my development's proceeding so quickly."

"Proud," Hank grumped, "my dog listens better than you do," and the look Connor gave him then was so fucking gorgeous that Hank just had to kiss him again.

That kept them occupied for a while. When Hank finally pulled away for a breath, he asked, "So, did I distract you from your files?"

"I don't believe for a moment that you planned any of that. But"—he grinned, genuine this time—"I suppose you did manage a distraction, yes."

Hank gave him a pat on the arm. "First thing in the morning, we'll start back up. For now"—he cut himself off with a yawn.

"Sleep?" Connor suggested.

"Shower, then sleep."

Hank rolled Connor off him, depositing him gently on the next couch cushion over. He hauled his bulk to his feet, then stood there a moment. Watching Connor watch him, remembering the way he'd wrapped his whole body around Hank.

"I know this is a weird offer," he said finally, "and feel free to laugh at me if I'm totally off here, but... if you wanna come watch me sleep for a while I won't say no."

Connor scrambled to his feet so fast he almost toppled off the couch.

Huh. Well, there was at least one guess Hank had gotten right. 

Acting on instinct once more, he wrapped an arm around Connor's shoulder, pulled him in tight and kissed the top of his head.

He was still reeling; from what he'd done with Connor, from the job he now had, from the whole surreal path his life had suddenly wound down these past sicks months. Now more than ever it all felt like a dream. But it was real, and it was his life, and he was more than okay with that.

"Come on," he muttered, cheeks flushed, and let Connot lead him back to their room.

**Author's Note:**

> Shockingly, 'thirium pump handjobs' is not a canonical tag.


End file.
